


A Ghost of you, A Ghost of me

by Webtrinsic



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Aftermath, Blind Kanan Jarrus, Captivity, Conditioning, Dehumanization, Desperation, Dissociation, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Family Feels, Family Fluff, Family Reunions, Hera Syndulla Needs A Hug, Hurt Hera Syndulla, Kanan Jarrus & Hera Syndulla as Space Parents, Kanan Jarrus Lives, Kanan Jarrus Needs a Hug, Not Canon Compliant, Parental Hera Syndulla, Past Sexual Abuse, Protective Kanan Jarrus, Rescue, Reunions, Reunited and It Feels So Good, Self-Esteem Issues, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-19 11:02:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29749545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Webtrinsic/pseuds/Webtrinsic
Summary: After a year in Thrawn's clutches, her family supposedly dead and the resistance stamped out. Hera Syndulla is brought home and reunited with her Jedi.
Relationships: Ezra Bridger & Kanan Jarrus & Garazeb "Zeb" Orrelios & Hera Syndulla & Sabine Wren, Hera Syndulla/Thrawn | Mitth'raw'nuruodo, Kanan Jarrus/Hera Syndulla
Comments: 2
Kudos: 24





	A Ghost of you, A Ghost of me

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Masterpiece](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22356757) by [Space_Samurai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Space_Samurai/pseuds/Space_Samurai). 



> ugh i love them so much, and after i read Space Samurai's fic i couldn't let go of the idea and needed to write something along the lines, so i really encourage everyone to read their fic.

Thrawn had left not even an hour ago, the ghost of his hands on her skin from that morning sitting ill in her mind. Noises scuttled from downstairs, and she didn’t move from where she sat on her pristinely made bed, blankly watching the dust filter in the sun’s rays.

Dead to the world, at least in her mind she wished she was. But her life did not sit in her hands, this was abundantly clear as she was immersed in the color of her captor, her abuser, and the bane of her existence. 

It’s possible it was Arihnda Pryce dropping in to pick up reports she could only wish to read, but Hera refused to get up in check. She wouldn’t even be able to get out of the door, it locked as if she were a child.  Then again, she was only just a piece with a family who was likely dead and wouldn’t be coming for her. All she could do was wait for the Chiss to return home and provide her company she didn’t really want. 

The door handle rattles, and knowing what would happen if she didn’t stand to acknowledge whoever’s presence there would be consequences The twi’lek rises. Smoothing out the crinkles on her dress, the world around her teetering on it’s axis when it finally popped open and Ezra stepped in.  Taller than her, with hair not as short as it had been when she’d last seen him but also not as long as it’d been when she first met him. She’d thought he was dead.

“Hera?” 

“Ezra?” they say their names at the same time, and tears drip down both of their faces as they rush to one another, her arms thrown around his shoulders and his head buried childishly into the side of her neck.

“I thought you were dead,” she dismays, gawking and sobbing as they squeeze together.

“We thought you were too. When we went to the prison and you weren’t there...Hera we thought they'd killed you,” _ we _ _ ,  _ that’s a good sign. He pulls away first, and she nearly whines not ready to let him go, and the pained look on his face lets her know he feels the same.

“We need to go. I grabbed this for you too,” he motions to her family Kalikori (fastened with Kanan’s holocron) and Kanan’s mask on his belt. It’s hard with her heels and dress but they manage to run, hand in hand, Ezra in the lead as they escape the house and the guard droids starting to power up from the intrusion.

Blaster fire and a whoosh meet the air, and Hera can’t place where the sound originated. But she knows the crashing hiss like the back of her hand, just as well as she knows who wields it.

Viciously scanning the area, there is no sight of her Jedi as Ezra drags her to the Ghost. Chopper warbling excitedly in greeting, bruising her shins as he barrels into her once she gets on, Zebs arms encircling her without remorse before she could even notice he was there.

“Zeb,” she croons, hugging his matted fur as he chuckles out a saddened laugh.

“Welcome back captain,” how she missed being called that. The ship jolts as it takes off, and the thought alone makes her weary, because Kanan isn’t here. All but sprinting in her shoes, Hera approaches the cockpit, wild lilac hair assaulting her eyes.

“Sabine,” comes out in an amused huff, and Chopper who had followed, unwilling to leave Hera alone plugged himself in so the mandalorian could scramble from her seat to lock her in a hug. She was a bit taller as well.

Crying into one another’s shoulders, Hera framing the girls face in her hands, they laughed joyously at their reunion. They only pull apart when the thundering sounds of footsteps approached, ones Hera dreamed of hearing while in her confines every night.

The cockpit door opens once again, and panting before her is her Jedi. Seemingly in shock as well, taking her in with sightless eyes and short hair she didn’t like in the slightest. Honestly, mentally his short hair is more taxing than the fact that the empire had basically won.

His mask decaled with the Jaig eyes and her kalikori snapped together with his holocron had haunted her for so long, seemingly confirming his death. But he was here now, right in front of her. 

She wonders what haunts her more then, thinking he’d been dead and actively performing the tradition of adding him to her family in front of Thrawn’s intrigued, conflicted yet accomplished eyes as he actually let her touch her _own_ kalikori for the first time since her capture.

Her own question that day putrid, _ ‘How would you like to witness a tradition in real time?’  _ Then again, she doesn’t know if she can truly blame herself, Kanan was her family and she couldn’t resist the pull to confirm that ever since Thrawn held out her apparently deceased lovers holocron.

Blinking away the remnants of the past, she rushes forward and Kanan is ready to catch her. Ready to sink himself in her force signature and bury his head into her throat so he could feel her pulse before she was grabbing his face and forcing their lips together with a broken sigh.

Their family looks on, and she smiles widely for the first time in ages, her cheeks hurt. 

“I hate your hair,” she’s exceedingly honest, not even knowing why those words were the first to leave her mouth, but he laughs brokenly nonetheless. The relief doesn’t last long, not to Hera who the longer she sits in his grasp, hating his hair, is stuck thinking back to the other things grating on her, mainly her outfit.

Kanan sighs, his breaths deep and brooding as he gathers his bearings, feeling the way she was quickly getting overwhelmed, and it wasn’t helping him either: “Why don’t we go to your cabin and get changed?” he suggests, hands cramping at his sides with a need to latch on, but he doesn’t dare add kindle to the fire lest it makes her uncomfortable.

Hera takes the branch he extends with a nod of her head, her own breaths going tight as she leaned into his side. Her family watched with understanding eyes as he carted her off to the sanctuary of her room.

* * *

The door to her cabin closes with a hiss behind them. It’s nothing like the holo’s where her breath would presumably catch and she’d run her hands over the gathered dust and cry softly about all the things she missed.

Instead she turns sharply, not even taking a glimpse at her cabin. The man behind her is far more important, so she rounds on him quickly, practically pinning him to the door. Her viridescent hands sliding up quickly from his chest, to his shoulders, and up into his short hair that she absolutely kriffing hates.

After all this time apart, she’d have at least hoped he would be familiar, and he knows that. Hera doesn’t have to be force sensitive to feel his guilt as he plants his hands on her hips, letting her lean into him, not wanting to rush their reunion or make her uncomfortable even when he’s aching to hold her.

A pitiful whine keens from the bottom of his throat, wishing he could magically grow out his hair as her fingers failed to make purchase in the shorter locks, causing her even more distress. Kanan shudders, his right hand slipping from her hip to her lower back, pulling her that much closer. Their foreheads falling together as if extending their sorrows.

Huffing breaths escape her and her voice is frustratingly angry, “So much has changed and all I can think about is how tall  _ our _ kids are,” there's a hysterical giggle that follows as she buries her head against his collarbone, childishly, as if she could hide from the hell she’d endured and everything she’d missed.

His brain hums at her referral of  _ our kids _ , and he nods in understanding-or maybe just to let her know he’s listening, against her temple, his lips accompanying the action again and again. His fingers petting her back, his calluses unintentionally catching at the ribbons keeping the royal blue silk snug on her skin.

It’s a gentle reminder of why she wanted to get to her room, more specifically of what she wanted to get out of. 

“Help me out of this?” She asks in a whisper, shame fluttering around her, and Kanan knows why. Someone had likely helped her tie the damn thing, someone would have had to help her out of it regardless if it’d been him or not, and his fury is tightly reserved.  Seething through his teeth and nostrils, jaw nearly wired shut as he began to pull at the ties. Fingers unravelling tight knots she couldn’t have even reached from where they were centered on her back.

The corner of Kanan’s lips tug down once the fabric breathes, stiffly yet gently helping her step out of the length of silk. The twi’lek practically shaking, worked up and itching to get the fabric away.

She even kicked the dress so it lay bunched in the corner of the room and not puddled around her feet. Hera then kicked the heels that were worn enough from their escape to snap off with it. The action steals an inch from her height, leaving her level with the familiar upside down triangle on his sweater.

Hera digs her nose against the symbol, giving up on trying to latch onto his hair and clung to the backs of his shoulders instead. They were wider than they were before, firmer too, he’d been building even more muscle in her absence. Making him look more and more like a knight in shining armor, but that didn’t truly matter to her, he’d already always been hers.

There’s a muted noise of muffled fabrics and she remembers dully that the head wrap on her head is also not her own, another mark of ownership and a personal defamation Thrawn had tacked on to watch her wallow and squirm.

Except the Chiss isn’t here, Kanan who has seen her without the headwrap was. Technically he couldn’t see her at all now, but Hera knew this was okay, she was certain of Kanan. She always would be as she pulled the matching blue fabric off and threw it to the growing pile. Thankfully the undergarments she had on weren’t anything gaudy or extreme, nothing like the dresses, veils, and head scarfs that’d been forced upon her.

She’d be alright with how she was, especially now as her adrenaline started to fade. The world perilously heavy on her shoulders, a headache forming behind the eyes. She’s tired in more ways than one, and she doesn’t just mean sleep.

Kanan takes the lead then, herding her with hands an inch away from her skin as if scared to touch her, she doesn’t let it last. Her hand intertwining with his own, a silent question for him to lay with her as she sat on her mattress.  Realizing maybe dumbly that it wasn’t stiff, the bashful discomfited blush on her lovers face explains it. 

“Oh my love,” she doesn’t pity him, dear force she understands that longing look. The yearning and ache to be together again. Hera only hoped that he’d been provided more comfort by sleeping in her bed than she had staring at his mask that she couldn’t even touch. Not even graze her fingers over unless she wanted to be smacked or locked in her room.

His knee indented the bed as he slowly lowered himself, his bottom lip quivering; she’s sure if his eyes were what they once were he’d be crying. His actions are slow, and she realizes all too suddenly why, he’s trying not to impose on her with his bigger gait and her frazzled disposition.

He’s being strong for her like he had been for their family and the little remains of the resistance in her absence. 

“C’mere,” she instructs, and he doesn’t wait any longer as they curl together under the blankets. Her head resting over his heart, legs tangled around each other, and his meaty arms entangled around her torso, his thumb idly brushing up against her left lek where it curled towards his heat.

His breath is hot against her head, his face curled reverently against her own. She wonders idly if he knows his scar still gives off more heat than the rest of his skin. Hera doesn’t voice the thought, knowing she was simply avoiding the bantha in the room.

“I missed you,” it comes out heavy in the darkness of the room, the weight of the words daunting, that pressure audible from where she rests on his chest. The vibrations burning her ear cones.

“I missed you too my love,” she doesn’t hold back with the endearments, and he appreciates it if the ‘I love you too’ brushed against her skin by his slightly chapped lips meant anything. Hera takes it as a cue that maybe she could relax, rest when her mind and body demanded it, but sleep would not take her.

No matter how alluring the reassuring beats of his heart and the warmth of his breath was, they failed to send her to sleep. Trauma and insomnia, a bastard. She’s not alone in this at least, and there is some guilt that potentially she was projecting, keeping him up as well, but Kanan’s brushing pet to her lekku with the back of his knuckles helped quell the feeling.

He was just as damaged as she. It would be a long time before either of them got any rest.

“Do you want to talk about it?” He seems open enough, but she’s known him long enough to hear the hints of trepidation in his tone. Frightened as if he was worried he couldn’t hold himself together if he didn’t like what he heard.

She’s not sure if she truly wanted to but she has to try, maybe talking would help sort her thoughts. Writing it down might work better, although Hera isn’t sure she could even lift her hand, in fact her body felt limp and wrung out. This didn’t seem to bother Kanan who she was using as a human pillow, and if it was he wasn’t making any move to dislodge her.

“I was basically the first and only living piece in his collection,” it’s a sad truth, one that quickly sucks the emotions out of her. Feeling listless all over again, a defense mechanism from her long imprisonment.

His brow crinkles against her skin, she can feel him trying to untense without her noticing, but she catches it easily enough. She doesn’t want to upset him further, but she’d been objectified and debauched for so long, her confidence and self-worth worn to the point of tears. Old stares pressing down on her, he is the only one who could bring her up again.

The only person she trusts when her outlook and perspective were skewed, he’d never steered her wrong before.

“I’m a pretty good piece am I not?” she asks blandly, nothing behind the words but a deprecating acceptance that cuts through her Jedi’s heart. His grip tightened minutely, and his heartbeat picked up as if it were jumping to lightspeed.

“You are not a piece,” he insisted with a booming growl, utterly revolted that the most courageous and all consuming presence in his life could now so easily diminish her worth in the same way that...that kriffing piece of bantha crap had. Irrefutably pissed at himself as well that he'd let it get to this point.

Her response is melancholy, and yet still earnestly appreciative, “No, not to you,” she hums, knowing her status was set at birth. No matter how far she rose above it, how far she had, there would always be some sleemo too immersed in their prejudice to care.

It was a fact. One she didn’t have to like, but one she had to accept all the same. One she knew Kanan was aware of as well, no matter how badly it pissed him off. Of course, it still angered and upset her, except after all this time. All this heartache, she just had to keep going.

Live with it, or die with it. And she personally with her ship, her crew, and especially her Jedi, she had so much to live for.

“Not to me,” he reiterates, and Hera wonders why she’d been surprised when she’d been captured and made into a personal pet that she’d thought Thrawn had been above the treatment he’d had her undergo.

Maybe that was why it’d frightened her so. Maybe that’s why she broke after all this time and didn’t know how to deal with the aftermath. Kanan’s hands are warm where Thrawn’s had been cold, and for now she could focus on that instead of everything else.  Not the foundations of the rebellion that would need to be reinforced, or the fact that her family had grown. She could focus on her Jedi and his heat, his love, and how she was something more than even herself to him. Not less.

It’s the final push to help bring her to sleep.

Kanan doesn’t follow, staring off into the dark with sightless eyes; wondering why this war and the pawns in it continued to try and succeed to take his family away. Hera with Thrawn, and Ezra with Maul, hell even Sabine’s family had tried and succeeded in taking her home for some time.

The jedi knows as the love of his life breathes gently against his neck, not in a possessive way or driven by malice, he _would_ keep his family safe, and he wouldn’t let something like this happen again.

**Author's Note:**

> Snap: allisonw1122  
> Tumblr/twitter: webtrinsic1122  
> Insta:Webtrinsic


End file.
